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January 07, 2008
Freaky Monday
It's Monday. It's early January in Northwest Indiana. It's 60 degrees out. We're having a thunder storm.
But I digress. Dinner tonight was delicious venison burgers, accompanied by roasted sweet potatoes with cumin, spinach-feta salad, and Samuel Adams Cranberry Lambic (went *really* well with the venison, I might add). Through some strange twist of fate we ended up getting our bathtub re-caulked last week by the friend-of-a-friend who did the tile install, FOR FREE, and then he invited us over for the evening and gave us a freezer full of venison. He's a hunter, and his wife is fed up with the entire deep freeze full of meat that has been accumulating.
Now, I'm sort of a fair-weather vegetarian. I was a full-fledged vegetarian for at least 7 years, ate no flesh aside from fish for another 5, and have dabbled in meat eating for about the last 5. However, especially after reading the excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma I have been especially fussy about the meat I eat, generally eschewing beef and treading lightly where chicken, pork, and fish are concerned. Recently I even decided that I was going to forego any meat I wouldn't be willing to slaughter myself, which pretty much limited me to fish and fowl.
The irony in my fascination with venison is that it is venison that was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back many moons ago. During my formative years, I lived in the country where we had a huge garen and kept chickens and a couple of pigs. These guys were my pets, and my twelve-year-old self was horrified when it came time to chop their heads off. My evil ex-stepfather and my father were/are both hunters, and walking into a garage with a day's kill hanging one evening was just too much for me to take. I didn't touch meat again until I was in college. Now my semi-vegetarianism isn't as much about empathy with the animals as it is health and environmental concerns. Which is why venison is perfect. If you can get past the whole Bambi thing, venison fulfills all my main criteria for meat: it led a happy life, it hasn't been force-fed an unnatural diet, it hasn't been raised in a way that negatively impacts the environment, and all in all it's an extremely healthy meat (low in saturated fat, high in protein and omegas, on and on). I don't have the means or the drive to go out and get a deer myself, so I'll have to rely on friends and acquaintances who do to get my meat. I'm happy to rely on my bartering skills as an amateur farmer/gatherer and go from there.
Does picking up a case of Coors Lite at Costco count as gathering?
Posted by mwashburn at January 7, 2008 07:56 PMPosted to food and drink
Comments
That's Coors LIGHT. Miller has the only LITE. Did you actually buy Coors Light?
Posted by: Jez at January 9, 2008 07:16 PM
Well, Jez, when someone offers to give you a freezer full of ethicially, environmentally, and nutritionally sound meat, you buy them whatever damn beer they like. Thanks for the correction on "light" vs "lite," I can never keep track.
Posted by: flygrrl at January 9, 2008 07:52 PM
Oh, well if its for trade, then no problem. Even if that's all my host is offering, I will drink it, but to actually buy it for yourself...whole 'nother coat a paint.
Posted by: Jesse at January 10, 2008 12:16 PM
This is interesting. I've only had venison a few times in my life, but the only way I ever liked it was chicken-frying the backstrap, which, you know, sort lessens the healthy goodness of it. I guess if I'm ever offered it again in the future, I'll give it another chance.
Posted by: Susanne Hinson-Rieger at January 11, 2008 08:05 AM